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With end of extended support for Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 quickly approaching within the next year, Microsoft has announced a program that will provide an additional 3 years of extended support if these workloads are migrated to Azure. Since this announcement in July, customers have been trying to figure out the most efficient way to migrate these workloads to Azure while preventing any security or compliance issues.

Daymark can help you maximize your savings by migrating these workloads to the cloud instead of trying to upgrade your on-premises licenses or using another migration path. There are several different components of Azure that will help you save money on an Azure migration, including Azure Hybrid Benefit, Azure Reserved Instances, Software Assurance, and SQL Hybrid Benefits & Managed Instances.

With Azure Hybrid Benefit & SQL Hybrid Benefits you can save up to 40% on either SQL or Windows virtual machines in Azure by utilizing your existing core-based licenses which are covered by Software Assurance. Azure Reserved Instances can save you up to 72% on either SQL or Windows virtual machines running in Azure by purchasing a specific size of virtual machine and paying for it upfront.

Savings Examples

A quantified example of customer savings with a migration to Azure would be an environment with on-prem SQL 2008 with 3 SQL 2008 VMs with 8-cores assigned to each, and all of the licenses have Software Assurance. The customer wants to migrate one of their database servers to Azure SQL Database and wants to run in vCore model with 8 general purpose cores. Since the customer has 24-core licenses (3 VMs * 8 cores) of SQL 2008, Azure Hybrid Benefit allows them to convert up to 24 General Purpose vCores in Azure SQL Database. To migrate the single SQL server, they can convert the 8-core licenses of their SQL 2008 licenses to 8 General Purpose vCores in Azure SQL Database (Azure SQL on VM, Azure SQL PaaS, Azure SQL Managed Instances) and retire the on-premises SQL VM. By doing this, the customer will save 40% or $7,000/year for Azure SQL PaaS or $3,500/year for Azure SQL Managed Instances. This scenario is calculated and shown through the figure below:

Another way customers can save with a migration to Azure would be an environment with on-prem Windows 2008 with 3 physical servers with 16-cores each, and each virtualized so there is a total of 48-core licenses. The customer wants to run 2 Windows Server 2008 VMs with 4 cores in Azure and they want to use A4v2 Azure VMs. In addition to this, they want to migrate their inventory tracking system to Azure which requires 4 Windows Server 2008 VMs with 8 cores each and they have identified they want to use D8sv3 Azure VMs. Since the customer has 48-core licenses of Windows Server 2008 with Software Assurance, Azure Hybrid Benefit allows them to run up to 6 VMs (up to 8 cores each) in Azure at the base compute rate. By utilizing Azure Hybrid Benefits, the customer will save 42% or ~$22,000/year for these 6 VMs. This is illustrated in the figure below:

Daymark Recommendations

We recommend that customers who have applications running on 2008 release servers begin migration planning to Azure as soon as possible. Learn more about our recommendations for secure and compliant migrations here. Depending on the application size, we have seen customers' migrations take anywhere from 3-12 months. Planning, replication and testing to make sure everything in the application functions the same in the cloud as it does on-premises are the most time consuming aspects of the migration. If you delay and experience a long migration effort, you could run up against the end of extended support deadline … and put your company’s data at risk.

Need help? Daymark is a Microsoft Tier 1 Cloud Service Provider. Our consultants have extensive experience with Azure migrations and would be happy to map out your migration strategy. We can get you started with our Azure Everywhere Workshop – A 2-day on-site workshop at your location where Daymark cloud consultants will conduct a thorough assessment of your environment and make recommendations on workloads best suited for the Azure platform. Contact us today to get started.